Posts tagged maps

Word Association: Mapping the World Via Martin Elmer: This map was produced by running all the various countries’ “History of _____” Wikipedia article through a word cloud, then writing out the most common word to fit into the country’s boundary. The result is thousands of years of human history oversimplified into 100-some words. Image: Laconic History of The World (2012), via Map Hugger. Select to embiggen.

Word Association: Mapping the World

Via Martin Elmer:

This map was produced by running all the various countries’ “History of _____” Wikipedia article through a word cloud, then writing out the most common word to fit into the country’s boundary. The result is thousands of years of human history oversimplified into 100-some words.

Image: Laconic History of The World (2012), via Map Hugger. Select to embiggen.

Google Street View Captures Fukushima Ghost Town Via The New York Times: The eerily empty streets of Namie, a town deep in the evacuation zone around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, are featured in the latest images captured by Google for its Street View mapping project. The scene is wrenching: houses flattened by the earthquake and now abandoned for fear of radiation; rows of empty shutters on a boulevard that once hosted Namie’s annual autumn festival; ships and debris that still dot a landscape laid bare by the 50-foot waves that destroyed its coastline more than two years ago. Namie’s 21,000 residents are still in government-mandated exile, scattered throughout Fukushima and across Japan. They are allowed brief visits no more than once a month to check on their homes. Over at Lat Long, the Google Maps blog, Tamotsu Baba, the town’s mayor, writes: Ever since the March disaster, the rest of the world has been moving forward, and many places in Japan have started recovering. But in Namie-machi time stands still. With the lingering nuclear hazard, we have only been able to do cursory work for two whole years. We would greatly appreciate it if you viewed this Street View imagery to understand the current state of Namie-machi and the tremendous gravity of the situation. Those of us in the older generation feel that we received this town from our forebearers, and we feel great pain that we cannot pass it down to our children. It has become our generation’s duty to make sure future generations understand the city’s history and culture—maybe even those who will not remember the Fukushima nuclear accident. We want this Street View imagery to become a permanent record of what happened to Namie-machi in the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster. Image: Screenshot, Google Street View from Namie-machi, Fukushima, Japan.

Google Street View Captures Fukushima Ghost Town

Via The New York Times:

The eerily empty streets of Namie, a town deep in the evacuation zone around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, are featured in the latest images captured by Google for its Street View mapping project.

The scene is wrenching: houses flattened by the earthquake and now abandoned for fear of radiation; rows of empty shutters on a boulevard that once hosted Namie’s annual autumn festival; ships and debris that still dot a landscape laid bare by the 50-foot waves that destroyed its coastline more than two years ago.

Namie’s 21,000 residents are still in government-mandated exile, scattered throughout Fukushima and across Japan. They are allowed brief visits no more than once a month to check on their homes.

Over at Lat Long, the Google Maps blog, Tamotsu Baba, the town’s mayor, writes:

Ever since the March disaster, the rest of the world has been moving forward, and many places in Japan have started recovering. But in Namie-machi time stands still. With the lingering nuclear hazard, we have only been able to do cursory work for two whole years. We would greatly appreciate it if you viewed this Street View imagery to understand the current state of Namie-machi and the tremendous gravity of the situation.

Those of us in the older generation feel that we received this town from our forebearers, and we feel great pain that we cannot pass it down to our children. It has become our generation’s duty to make sure future generations understand the city’s history and culture—maybe even those who will not remember the Fukushima nuclear accident. We want this Street View imagery to become a permanent record of what happened to Namie-machi in the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster.

Image: Screenshot, Google Street View from Namie-machi, Fukushima, Japan.

So This is What the Internet Looks Like

Peer 1 Hosting has released free mobile apps for Android and iPhone that map the Internet.

Via Peer 1:

Users can view Internet service providers (ISPs), Internet exchange points, universities and other organizations through two view options – Globe and Network. The app also allows users to generate a trace route between where they are located to a destination node, search for where popular companies and domains are, as well as identify their current location on the map…

…[T]he app’s timeline is rooted in real data that uses timeline visualization to display 22,961 autonomous system nodes joined by 50,519 connections based on Internet topology from our partner in this project, CAIDA. We were also able to project what the Internet will look like in 2020 by using an algorithm based on current data, as well as predictions for the growth of the hosting industry by various independent research agencies.

The iPhone app is here (iTunes). The Android app is here (Google Play).

Images: Selected screens from Peer 1’s Internet Map. Select to embiggen.

Submarine Cables new-aesthetic: “The design of our new map was inspired by antique maps and star charts, and alludes to the historic connection between submarine cables and cartography.” Submarine Cable Map FJP: Slate’s Will Oremus fills in some details. At first glance, the lines appear to mirror long-proven global trade routes, with major hubs in global capitals like New York, Amsterdam, and Mumbai. But Mauldin notes that there have been no new cables across the Atlantic since 2003. The growth today is in historically under-served regions like Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. Nor are all the hubs located in the big cities you’d expect. That phalanx of cables converging on Brazil, for instance, lands not in Sao Paolo or Rio de Janeiro but Fortaleza, simply because it’s an easier hop from the Northern Hemisphere. Another surprisingly popular destination is Djibouti, whose appeal becomes more clear when you consider the relative business-friendliness of its neighbors at the mouth of the Red Sea: Somalia, Eritrea, Yemen.

Submarine Cables

new-aesthetic:

“The design of our new map was inspired by antique maps and star charts, and alludes to the historic connection between submarine cables and cartography.”

Submarine Cable Map

FJP: Slate’s Will Oremus fills in some details.

At first glance, the lines appear to mirror long-proven global trade routes, with major hubs in global capitals like New York, Amsterdam, and Mumbai. But Mauldin notes that there have been no new cables across the Atlantic since 2003. The growth today is in historically under-served regions like Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. Nor are all the hubs located in the big cities you’d expect. That phalanx of cables converging on Brazil, for instance, lands not in Sao Paolo or Rio de Janeiro but Fortaleza, simply because it’s an easier hop from the Northern Hemisphere. Another surprisingly popular destination is Djibouti, whose appeal becomes more clear when you consider the relative business-friendliness of its neighbors at the mouth of the Red Sea: Somalia, Eritrea, Yemen.

I say that news organizations should become advocates for open information, demanding that government not only make more of it available but also put it in standard formats so it can be searched, visualized, analyzed, and distributed. What the value of that information is to society is not up to the gatekeepers — officials or journalists — to decide. It is up to the public.

Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine. Public is public… except in journalism?

While the above quote may stand on its own, a little context: not everyone liked the map of gun permit owners that was published in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting. Jarvis believes that the decision of whether or not the map is morally sound belongs to the public — not to journalists.

Other media thinkers have said otherwise. The Times’ David Carr argued yesterday that the map, which showed the addresses of gun permit owners in New York’s Westechester and Rockland counties, isn’t journalism.

Well, is it?

Red v Blue, Not So True

Via Chris Howard:

America really looks like this - I was looking at the amazing 2012 election maps created by Mark Newman (Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan), and although there is a very interesting blended voting map (Most of the country is some shade of purple, a varied blend of Democrat blue and Republican red) what I really wanted was this blended map with a population density overlay. Because what really stands out is how red the nation seems to be when you do not take the voting population into account; when you do so many of those vast red mid-west blocks fade into pale pink and lavender (very low population).

So I created a new map using Mark’s blended voting map based on the actual numbers of votes for each party overlaid with population maps from Texas Tech University and other sources.

Here’s the result — what the American political voting distribution really looks like.

Images: Chris Howard’s “blended” voting map, via Facebook (top); Mark Newman’s 2012 voting maps by state, county and percentage vote by county (bottom). Select to embiggen.

Building USA TODAY’s Election Night Maps MapBox General Manager Dave Cole walks us through the realtime election mapping platform it created for USA Today for last week’s election. Via Mapbox: Throughout the 2012 election cycle, we’ve been fascinated with idea of visualizing realtime election results. On election day starting when voting concludes on the East Coast, newsrooms race to process and visualize vote totals in each of the 50 states, 435 congressional districts, and 3,200 counties across the country. The Associated Press provides a feed of results data aggregated from staff deployed across the country on eight minute intervals. Since nearly all news outlets subscribe to this data, the race to report results first is really about having an incredibly short time to publish, while maintaining a steadfast focus on reliability during what’s often the highest traffic night for news websites. The excitement of the night and availability of a reliable source of fast data make this a really exciting problem to solve. The stack includes: Live rendering tile server Server-side static map image generation Client-side dynamic image manipulation SVG vectors with VML fallback Map Rendering Geodata Processing Ultimately, MapBox and USA Today developers then created a JSON API to pull the AP’s XML data in to the application for both Web and mobile display. Read through to learn how it was done and what tools were used. Image: iPad view of USA Today’s live election results, via MapBox.

Building USA TODAY’s Election Night Maps

MapBox General Manager Dave Cole walks us through the realtime election mapping platform it created for USA Today for last week’s election.

Via Mapbox:

Throughout the 2012 election cycle, we’ve been fascinated with idea of visualizing realtime election results. On election day starting when voting concludes on the East Coast, newsrooms race to process and visualize vote totals in each of the 50 states, 435 congressional districts, and 3,200 counties across the country. The Associated Press provides a feed of results data aggregated from staff deployed across the country on eight minute intervals. Since nearly all news outlets subscribe to this data, the race to report results first is really about having an incredibly short time to publish, while maintaining a steadfast focus on reliability during what’s often the highest traffic night for news websites. The excitement of the night and availability of a reliable source of fast data make this a really exciting problem to solve.

The stack includes:

  • Live rendering tile server
  • Server-side static map image generation
  • Client-side dynamic image manipulation
  • SVG vectors with VML fallback
  • Map Rendering
  • Geodata Processing

Ultimately, MapBox and USA Today developers then created a JSON API to pull the AP’s XML data in to the application for both Web and mobile display.

Read through to learn how it was done and what tools were used.

Image: iPad view of USA Today’s live election results, via MapBox.

horaciogaray: Facebook and Foursquare both have real-time maps of polling place check-ins across the country, broken down by state. Facebook’s map runs on autopilot: Load it up, sit and watch, almost like an iTunes visualization. Blue dots show a polling place check-in, while a counter above tallies the total check-ins. The map can also be switched into an impressive full-screen view. FJP: The Facebook map is here and the Foursquare map is here.

horaciogaray:

Facebook and Foursquare both have real-time maps of polling place check-ins across the country, broken down by state. Facebook’s map runs on autopilot: Load it up, sit and watch, almost like an iTunes visualization. Blue dots show a polling place check-in, while a counter above tallies the total check-ins. The map can also be switched into an impressive full-screen view.

FJP: The Facebook map is here and the Foursquare map is here.

Digital Trends in Journalism

Over at O’Reilly Radar Alex Howard takes a look at the latest Knight News Challenge winners and identifies key trends in “journalism’s networked future.”

  • Networked accountability: Alex looks at a project by Safecast that hopes to bridge “citizen science, open data, open source hardware, civic hacking and the Internet of things to monitor, share and map radiation data.”
  • Peer-to-peer collaboration, across newsrooms: Individual journalists, technologists and organizations are collaborating across news organizations like never before. Yes, there’s competition between them still, but there’s also coopition and pure collaboration.
  • The value of an open geo commons: There’s Google Maps and there’s what Apple is trying to call maps, but these are proprietary solutions for news organizations that want to visually place their stories and data in a precise place. OpenStreetMaps is a well known open source startup. Knight winner Development Seed is building visualization tools on top of it so that “media organizations large and small can tap into to inform communities using maps.”
  • “Open” is in: Especially open data that’s used for the public good.

Read through for Alex’s descriptions of each.

Alex Howard, O’Reilly Radar. Four key trends changing digital journalism and society.

Google Takes Mapping Underwater

Google added its first underwater panoramas to Google Maps yesterday.

From their blog:

With these vibrant and stunning photos you don’t have to be a scuba diver—or even know how to swim—to explore and experience six of the ocean’s most incredible living coral reefs. Now, anyone can become the next virtual Jacques Cousteau and dive with sea turtles, fish and manta rays in Australia, the Philippines and Hawaii.

See the camera details here.

ReadWriteWeb brought up the other news this week:

Since Apple’s lukewarm launch, the press has begun to wonder whether Google will deliver a standalone mapping app for iOS to compete with Apple’s. Google appears to be buying time by showing off this undersea Reef View as a demonstration of its planet-wide prowess.

FJP: I really need to get outside more. — Blake.

sunfoundation: ZeroAccess: A look at just how big a botnet can get Sometimes it’s hard to imagine just how contagious a botnet can be, and then sometimes you see them from space. Security researchers at F-Secure created this look at ZeroAccess botnet infections today, across the United States and the world. FJP: ZeroAccess turns a computer into a peer-to-peer hub that then downloads more malware and waits for further commands. Via Sophos: ZeroAccess uses a peer-to-peer network to download plugin files which carry out various tasks designed to generate revenue for the botnet owners. Our researchers monitored this network for a period of two months to discover where in the world the peers were located and what kind of files the botnet was being instructed to download. We found the IP addresses of infected machines from a total of 198 countries ranging from the tiny island nation of Kiribati to the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan.

sunfoundation:

ZeroAccess: A look at just how big a botnet can get

Sometimes it’s hard to imagine just how contagious a botnet can be, and then sometimes you see them from space. Security researchers at F-Secure created this look at ZeroAccess botnet infections today, across the United States and the world.

FJP: ZeroAccess turns a computer into a peer-to-peer hub that then downloads more malware and waits for further commands. Via Sophos:

ZeroAccess uses a peer-to-peer network to download plugin files which carry out various tasks designed to generate revenue for the botnet owners. Our researchers monitored this network for a period of two months to discover where in the world the peers were located and what kind of files the botnet was being instructed to download.

We found the IP addresses of infected machines from a total of 198 countries ranging from the tiny island nation of Kiribati to the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan.

2012 Presidential Campaign Stops A Washington Post infographic shows where the Obama and Romney campaigns have visited since June. You can filter by candidate, vice presidential candidate, all four wives, and even see which events were fundraisers. Select a state and the map updates to show you where in it a candidate (or surrogate) visited. Unless, of course, you’re Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Kentucky, Alaska or Hawaii. Neither campaign seems to like you. Tech Notes: The map is made with Leaflet, an Open Source JavaScrip library for creating interactive maps, and uses map data from OpenStreetMap, the crowdsourced collaborative mapping project. Image: Screenshot, Presidential Campaign Stops - Who’s Going Where, via the Washington Post. Select to embiggen. H/T: Flowing Data.

2012 Presidential Campaign Stops

A Washington Post infographic shows where the Obama and Romney campaigns have visited since June.

You can filter by candidate, vice presidential candidate, all four wives, and even see which events were fundraisers. Select a state and the map updates to show you where in it a candidate (or surrogate) visited.

Unless, of course, you’re Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Kentucky, Alaska or Hawaii. Neither campaign seems to like you.

Tech Notes: The map is made with Leaflet, an Open Source JavaScrip library for creating interactive maps, and uses map data from OpenStreetMap, the crowdsourced collaborative mapping project.

Image: Screenshot, Presidential Campaign Stops - Who’s Going Where, via the Washington Post. Select to embiggen.

H/T: Flowing Data.

Made in New York City A map of NYC start-ups, incubators and investors. Also includes information about companies that are hiring if you’re in the market.

Made in New York City

A map of NYC start-ups, incubators and investors. Also includes information about companies that are hiring if you’re in the market.

US Life Expectancy by County, 1989 and 2009

Via the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation:

IHME analyzed new mortality data by age, sex, and county for the US from 1989 to 2009. Across US counties, life expectancy in 2009 ranged from 66.1 to 81.6 years for men and 73.5 to 86.0 years for women. From 1989 to 2009, life expectancy for men improved by 4.6 years on average but only by 2.7 years for women. And throughout the country, women were more likely than men to have no progress in life expectancy or to have their lifespans get shorter over time.

In 661 counties, life expectancy stopped dead or went backwards for women since 1999. By comparison, life expectancy for men stopped or reversed in 166 counties. This troubling trend is occurring in 84% of Oklahoma counties, 58% of Tennessee counties, and 33% of Georgia counties.

The gap between women living the longest lives and those living the shortest lives is growing, too. In Collier, Florida, women live 85.8 years on average. In McDowell, West Virginia, they live to be 74.1. That’s an 11.7-year gap. In 1989, the gap was 8.7 years. For men, the gap is larger – 15.5 years – but it has grown by less than a year since 1989. Men live the longest in Marin, California, at 81.6 years. They live the shortest lives on average in Quitman and Tunica, Mississippi, at 66.1.

The range of life expectancies is so broad that in some counties, such as Stearns, Minnesota, lifespans rival some of the places where people live the longest – Japan, Hong Kong, and France – while in other counties, life expectancies are lower than places that spend far less on health care – Egypt, Indonesia, and Colombia. Even within states, there are large disparities. Women in Fairfax, Virginia, have among the best life expectancies in the world at 84.1 years, while in Sussex, Virginia, they have among the worst at 75.9 years.

At the same time, the life expectancy gap between black Americans and white Americans is closing. In 1989, black men could expect to live to be 63.8 on average, while white men had an average lifespan of 72.5, a difference of 8.7 years. In 2009, black male life expectancy improved by nearly a decade to 71.2 years, and white male life expectancy improved at a slower rate to 76.7 years, a 5.5-year gap. The gap between black women and white women is even narrower: 3.6 years. Black women on average in 2009 had a life expectancy of 77.9 years, compared to 81.5 years for white women.

Images: Screenshots, Life expectancy by county and sex (US), 1989-2009. Top, 1989. Bottom, 2009. Via IHME.